I’ve tried the suggestions and it is easily the very best posted so far.
I called it a “twistydore” or “twistedore” because a stevedore is sometimes called a double figure eight, right? And if so, this is a quadruple figure eight (I use four twists). Or a double stevedore. If that’s a bad coinage I’ll drop it and refer to it as a stevedore loop. I just figured the “twisty” was appropriate for the variable amount of twists available.
I would not have guessed a Stevedore loop would be highly desirable in this application with slick floss.
I asked how the knots were able to slide, if snug together?
I'm sure the blood knot has plenty of use cases but why would I choose it over the zeppelin bend? Or, in this case where untying isn't needed, over the twistydore knot, which is way easier to tie quickly?
Because it is stronger and has a slim profile.
I have never ever, until today, heard of reusing floss. I searched for it and found this page:
Is it okay to reuse floss previously used?
/answers.yahoo.com/question/
If this is what you count as advice, good luck to you.
“ewwww”.
Then again, you never heard of using an Offset Stevedore+/Fig.10+ , either.
The Western world --and esp. The States (USA)-- is a throwaway world;
and now there are wars in the land of petroleum, and continual threats
to nature so that we can “just throw it away” – these many petroleum
products, and others. (Actually, water is perhaps soon enough the
bigger problem.)
Can you wash or rinse, dabble in alcohol or hyd.peroxide?
Do you throw out your toothbrush each time (or do you steer
around those nasty bacteria of the mouth with it so it remains
pristine)? You might even floss with some toothpastey mouth.
(And will you brush/sterilize a lover’s mouth before kissing?!)
Hey, you could make a 1-/2-week set of (variously tied) flossing loops,
to give a long drying de-germing time, if it bothers you.
If this is what you count as advice, good luck to you.
Thank you to all who made suggestions.
Some of it was very useful and that way of tying the Stevedore sincerely improved my life. I'll use it with a single twist to make my figure eights faster, too.
Then again, you never heard of using an [i]Offset Stevedore+/Fig.10+[/i] , either.
That's right. My knotting vocabulary was very small. I've never seen that kind of "plus" orthography before.
As for reusing floss, I’ll keep thinking about this important issue. Perhaps I can make a greater effort than I have in the past to make sure that the floss I buy isn’t made from non-renewable sources, like fossils.
I tied the Stevedore (“Twistedore”) in dental floss. It worked flosslessly, I mean, flawlessly. It was quite easy to tie too. If I’m bored one day, then I’ll try the other methods mentioned here.
Trying to tag on to the list of useful knots, bends, hitches and the like here so far - have you tried the Timber Hitch as a pair of loops one to the other? Just a thought because it is about as fiddly as the twice-around Stevedore and does not involve poking and end through a loop more than once (three times with the twistydore?) to join the two loops. I’ll go try it - as I said, just tryin’ to be helpful…
I found probably the easiest method to do this. Try the surgeon’s knot, but add a few more turns to the loop, as many as it takes really for your brand of floss. In my tests on the Oral-B Satin floss, it didn’t even come close to slipping before the floss broke.
I?ll try the ?twistydore? knot. I?ve been using a Carrick Bend, which holds in some types of floss, but not in others. By tying an overhand knot below the Carrick Bend, it always holds. It?s easy to tie too. However I imagine that the floss is under a lot of shear strain at the overhand knot. I haven?t broken it yet, so it does work well, but it seems like an inelegant solution. As for re-using floss, sometimes it begins to shred when using it once. You?re not going to get a lot of use from a piece of dental floss, and getting shreds caught between one?s teeth is un-fun. When one considers sanitation, it seems worse than pointless.
Seems I am a bit late to the party, but I think the first knot I ever posted about might fit the bill. It is simply a round turn tied around a round turn. When drawn up it holds extremely well and seems to be quite strong.